I am an artisan. I only became an artist when people watch what I do. That is when it becomes art.
I've only been interested in the artistic side of life.
Yes, there is a terrible moral in 'Dorian Gray' - a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.
There can be no 'graduated exercises in drawing' leading up to an artistic creation. That goal can be attained only through the development of mechanical technique and through the freedom of the spirit.
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.
How can anybody learn anything from an artwork when the piece of art only reflects the vanity of the artist and not reality?
Only a person who has passed through the gate of humility can ascend to the heights of the spirit.
One can ascend to a higher development only by bringing rhythm and repetition into one's life. Rhythm holds sway in all nature.
Just now, Christianity is in the ascendant. Buddhism and Taoism are decadent; their influence cannot long hold its own. Buddhism has long since passed its meridian; Taoism has only demons, not gods.
Man can be understood only by ascending from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. In other words, he is first of all a cosmic problem.
Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
The whites have resolved to destroy our liberty and have therefore brought a force commensurate to their intentions. The Cape, after a proper resistance, has fallen into their hands, but the enemy found only a town and plain in ashes; the forts were blown up, and all was burnt.
If we turn our backs of the Scythians who have provoked us, how shamefully shall we march against the revolted Bactrians; but if we pass Tanais and make the Scythians feel, by dear experience, that we are invincible, not in Asia only, it is not to be doubted but that Europe itself, as well as Asia, will come within the bounds of our conquests.
And it's very strange, but I think there is something very common - not only in Celtic music - but there is a factor or element in Celtic music that is similar in music that we find in Japan, the United States, Europe, and even China and other Asian countries.
With the first novel, I was concerned I would be pigeon-holed as an Asian-American writer, and the book would be labeled for Asian-Americans only.
Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
The Lord only knows how many times I let my children go hungry rather than take secretly the bread I liked not to ask for.
In Congress, there are some who are unashamed to aspire to eloquence, even to scholarship, but the only state legislator I ever knew who would not join in the mispronounceciation of a word for the sake of camaraderie with her fellows was former State Senator and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.
Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities.
